If you're enthusiastic about social media platforms, you might have come across Activitypub technology lately. This emerging technology holds significance as it facilitates interaction among various social media networks. While it might appear intricate initially, comprehending it can spark numerous questions and uncertainties.Here, we'll elucidate all the essentials about this technology to acquaint you with it.
What is ActivityPub and how does it work?
Activitypub technology offers a pathway to establish decentralized social networks, acting as a standard across a consortium of social web networks associated with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The core concept of this technology is enabling users to access content posted on one social network through another. For instance, if you're using platform "X" (formerly Twitter), you can view posts and images from the "Instagram" platform and even access user profiles directly from platform "X".
However, for social networks to engage in this cross-platform interaction, they must adhere to the Activitypub standard. While this technology is prevalent in some social networks presently, its adoption may expand in the future.
How Activitypub works
Social networks that rely on Activitypub technology rely on their own servers called "Activitypub servers", and these servers are responsible for receiving and publishing messages. When a user posts something on a social network, Activitypub encapsulates that content in its own format called "Activity," and then sends it over HTTP to other social network servers. In this way, other networks are able to view what the user has posted.
Social networks that use Activitypub
Although large social networks have not yet moved to the Activitypub protocol, there are some interesting alternatives. These networks include Mastodon and Calckey, two of the most prominent alternatives to Twitter and Instagram respectively. There's also Pixelfeld, an interesting alternative to Instagram. Thanks to this technology, users can see the content that is published on other platforms without difficulty.
Threads, which serves as Instagram's Twitter, is set to join Activitypub soon. This development will allow posts published on Threads to reach a wider audience through other platforms such as Mastodon.
Why don't other social networks join Activitypub?
Despite the benefits of the Activitypub protocol in enabling interaction between social networks, large networks may refuse to use it due to concerns about uniqueness and maintaining their audience. Additionally, smaller networks may raise privacy concerns when joining platforms affiliated with large companies such as Threads.
